Reference:Introduction

This book provides a reference for the Persistence of Vision Ray-Tracer (POV-Ray). The documentation applies to all platforms to which this version of POV-Ray is ported. The platform-specific documentation is available for each platform separately.

This book is divided into these main parts:

This introduction together with a complete reference on POV-Ray Options which explains options (set either by command line switches or by INI file keywords) that tell POV-Ray how to render the scenes.
A complete reference on Scene Description Language in which you describe the scene.
A complete reference on the Standard Include Files that come with the POV-Ray package, to be used in your scenes.
Finally, a consolidation of the POV-Ray Scene Description Language in the Quick Reference.

This book covers only the generic parts of the program which are common to each version.

Note: Each version has platform-specific documentation not included here.

We recommend you finish reading the tutorial book then read the platform-specific information before using this reference.

The platform-specific docs will show you how to render a sample scene and will give you detailed description of the platform-specific features.

The Windows version documentation is available on the POV-Ray program's Help menu or by pressing the F1 key while in the program.

The Mac platform documentation is available via the Help menu as well as for viewing using a regular web browser. Details may be found in the POV-Ray MacOS Read Me which contains information specific to the Mac version of POV-Ray. It is best to read this document first.

The Unix / Linux version documentation can be found at the same place as the platform independent part. Usually that is /usr/local/share/povray-3.?/html

More about the notation used throughout this book may be found in the section Notation and Basic Assumptions.

Reference:Introduction

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